The Bihar assembly elections have been announced, and now all eyes are glued to know the final result on November 14, when votes will be counted. The Bihar election is important for various reasons. This is the election in which the credibility of the Election Commission is at stake, and either way, a serious debate will ensue after the results are pronounced about whether votes were polled and counted with fairness or not and the result was not manipulated to suit the interest of a particular party.
The role of the Election Commission has never been discussed so much since the days when TN Seshan was the chief election commissioner, who should be credited for making the EC a powerful institution that refused to toe the government line. He embarked on a road which gave the EC ferocious teeth to bite big political parties, powerful prime ministers and chief ministers and cleansed the electoral system at a time when elections meant deaths and destruction at polling booths on a polling day.
Before the elections were announced, SIR had become the talk of the town, and the Opposition had alleged that the entire exercise was designed to help the ruling NDA by deleting and adding names of voters in the voters’ list to ensure the BJP/JDU’s victory. The SIR was challenged in the Supreme Court and, by court order, was forced to announce the reasons for the deletion of each of the 65 lakh names that had disappeared from the draft list. The EC was quite adamant in not allowing the use of the Aadhar Card for the verification of the voters’ list.
Finally, it was allowed after SC’s stern order. It was propagated that a lot of foreigners’ names were included at the behest of the Opposition to beat the BJP/JDU, but till the time of writing this column, no name was found, and no arrest has been made to prove this claim. It was a hoax call that proves the accusation that the BJP used the names of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas to polarise the election. In this election, the EC has to prove that elections in India can’t be manipulated. Elections should not only be conducted fairly but should also be seen to be done fairly.
Therefore, more than the political parties, the EC has to prove that it does not act in favour of any party and its conduct is above suspicion, and the SIR was not to favour any party but to ensure a clean and correct voters’ list. This election is very important for Modi and the BJP, as the Rahul Gandhi-led Opposition has accused them of manipulating the election via the EC. The BJP has to prove that Rahul’s accusations have no basis, and they win the election not by manipulation but by voters’ choice. Even if the BJP loses the election, it should not be seen as creating any hurdle in the direction of free and fair elections and should kill this vote chori debate for all elections to come.
Rahul Gandhi has emerged as a powerful leader of the opposition since the 2024 parliamentary election. He is seen to be setting the agenda and has forced the BJP to react, be it to the Save Constitution campaign, the Caste Census demand, or now the Vote Chori allegation. Rahul is emerging as a serious challenger to Prime Minister Modi. According to the C Voter survey, Rahul is closing the gap in popularity vis-à-vis Modi for the prime minister’s post. Rahul, since he became the top gun of the Congress, has lost more elections than he has won.
He has to prove that he can win elections too and that under his leadership, the Congress’s increased seat tally in the 2024 election was not a fluke. His Voter Adhikar Yatra has been hugely successful and attracted big crowds, which has galvanised the Congress cadres at the grassroots, but whether people will vote for the Congress remains to be seen. Tejaswi Yadav missed the bus by a whisker in the 2020 Assembly elections. He came very close to winning the election. Tejaswi was a greenhorn then. Nonetheless, he courageously made unemployment the central theme of the Bihar election.
And Modi-Nitish had to burn the midnight oil to win. Since then, he has matured as a leader and is now the sole leader of Mahagathbandhan, and in almost every survey, he is ahead of Nitish as a first choice as chief minister. But can he do it? That is the million-dollar question. Twenty years is a long time in politics for the rise of anti-incumbency against any government, and Nitish Kumar is no exception. He is trying to neutralise the anger of the people by doling out money directly into their accounts, especially women. Can this magic work again, like it did in MP, Haryana and Maharashtra?
This will be the last election for Nitish. He looks frailer and seems to have lost control over administration due to his failing health. There are serious speculations that he is only a front; the government and the JDU are being run by others. But Nitish should not be underestimated; he is an original maverick in Indian politics who has survived long and remained the CM for two decades. Even at this ripe age, he has the capacity to pull out the proverbial rabbit from the hat to unsettle his rivals.
Bihar has a great history; it’s a land of great empires, but of late, it is the poorest state in India with the lowest per capita income in the country, where almost 34% of households earn less than Rs 6000 and more than 95% of the population does not own a vehicle. Bihar needs new thinking and fresh ideas to break free from the curse of backwardness and poverty. Can this election prove that Bihar does not vote for caste but for real issues?
The writer is Co-Founder, SatyaHindi.com, and author of Hindu Rashtra. He tweets at @ashutosh83B
